Africa is facing a health crisis that disproportionately affects women and children. According to the Global Financing Facility (GFF), a partnership that supports low- and middle-income countries to improve their health systems, more than half of the world’s maternal deaths and two-thirds of the world’s child deaths occur in Africa. These deaths are largely preventable with adequate funding, policies, and services.
The GFF aims to address this challenge by mobilizing and aligning resources from various sources, such as governments, donors, the private sector, and civil society, to invest in high-impact interventions that can save lives and improve health outcomes. The GFF also helps countries strengthen their health systems and increase their domestic financing for health, especially for women, children, and adolescents.
In a recent report, the GFF highlighted some of the achievements and challenges of its work in Africa since its launch in 2015. The report showed that the GFF has supported 26 African countries in developing and implementing their national health plans, prioritizing maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health and nutrition. The report also showed that the GFF has leveraged $2.6 billion from the International Development Association (IDA) and the World Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) of the World Bank Group and $1.2 billion from other sources to finance these plans.
Some of the results achieved by the GFF-supported countries in Africa include:
- Increasing the coverage of skilled birth attendance from 50% to 59% between 2015 and 2020.
- Reducing the prevalence of stunting among children under five from 38% to 34% between 2015 and 2020.
- Expanding access to family planning services, with an additional 12.8 million women using modern contraceptives between 2015 and 2020.
- Improving the quality of care, with more than 80% of health facilities meeting minimum maternal and newborn care standards in Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania.
- More than 70% of GFF-supported countries have a functional health information system and a national health financing strategy to enhance the resilience of health systems.
However, the report also acknowledged that significant gaps and challenges still need to be addressed to achieve universal health coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. Some of these challenges include:
- The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted essential health services and threatened to reverse the progress made in recent years.
- The low domestic revenue mobilization for health limits the fiscal space and sustainability of health financing.
- The weak governance and accountability mechanisms hinder the effective implementation and monitoring of health policies and programs.
- The persistent inequities and social determinants of health affect the access and quality of care for vulnerable groups, such as women, children, adolescents, and people living in rural areas.
To overcome these challenges, the GFF called for more action and collaboration from all stakeholders, including governments, donors, the private sector, civil society, and communities. The GFF also urged more investment in its trust fund, which is expected to run out of funds by mid-2024. The GFF estimated that it needs an additional $1.4 billion to continue supporting its existing portfolio of countries until 2025.
The GFF’s director, Muhammad Ali Pate, said that investing in women’s and children’s health is a moral imperative and a smart economic choice. He said every dollar invested in the GFF can yield up to nine dollars in social and economic returns. He also said that funding women’s and children’s health is key to achieving health equity and building a more prosperous and resilient Africa.
Source: Bloomberg
